Where exactly are those promised LGBT members of Joe Biden’s cabinet?

There are two things America has never had, at least until this year: a gay couple in a Hallmark movie and an openly gay cabinet secretary. This Christmas season has given us at least one of those things, though just which one might surprise many progressives.

This weekend, I eagerly cuddled up under the duvet to watch three landmark films in the canon of both gay cinema and Christmas schmaltz. Paramount TV’s Dashing in December mixed festive cheer with the gay cowboy trope, while The Christmas Setup gave us Fran Drescher as the meddling mother of Ben Lewis, who fixed him up with real-life husband Blake Lee. Hulu’s Happiest Season, which premiered last week, is about a lesbian who comes out to her conservative family over the holiday. These entries follow last month’s The Christmas House, Hallmark TV’s first film to feature a gay couple (albeit in a supporting role).

Made-for-TV Christmas movies are so ubiquitous this time of year that even Saturday Night Live has parodied the formulaic fare.  Yet, until this year, they have almost exclusively centered straight, white couples. Networks like Hallmark (which has built its entire business model around the Christmas season) are small-c conservative, appealing to middle Americans who believe in “family values” and go to church on Sunday, watch football on Monday, and shoot their guns every other day of the week. It’s the channel your grandma watches, so the thinking goes, not RuPaul’s Drag Race.

That these networks decided the heartland is finally ready for gay couples at Christmas shows just how far we have come to mainstreaming acceptance of same-sex love. Wholesome and chaste, Dashing in December and The Christmas Setup follow the same general premise that has made Hallmark and Lifetime must-see TV in December: big city lawyer goes home for Christmas, falls in love and, realizing the virtues of the heartland, chooses love over career and moves back home.

There is a lot one could unpack about what that says about American culture and its relationship to its cities versus the idyll of small-town life. No one can deny, though, that these films are incredibly popular — they account for much of Hallmark’s annual viewing figures and ad revenue — and that by centering gay couples, the filmmakers and networks are messaging that our relationships are every bit as valid and pure as straight relationships. We are not just part of the fabric of America, but part of the fabric of the American family.  

Eager to share in the joy of these corny but cheering movies, I live-tweeted both The Christmas Setup and Dashing in December with other gay people excited to finally be represented in what is a most American of genres. Yet, while I was tweeting, I was also refreshing my feed to see if President-elect Joe Biden had appointed any LGBT people to his cabinet. Biden promised his “cabinet that looks like America” would include LGBT Americans. At the time of writing, it does not.

Certainly, the politics of inclusion can only get you so far. In Christmas movies, centering a gay couple means little if the script is crap or the acting abysmal. In cabinet positions, policy matters much more than demographics, and qualifications especially matter when making decisions about who will run federal departments. No one should be appointed solely for being LGBT.

But to argue that no LGBT people are qualified for any cabinet position is equally as ludicrous — and LGBT rights groups are growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of LGBT appointees in Biden’s cabinet. Annise Parker, former mayor of Houston and president of the LGBT Victory Fund, told Scott Bixby of The Daily Beast that she’d be “extremely disappointed if the commitment to inclusion does not extend to [our community].” Many LGBT leaders pushed for Fred Hochberg, the former head of the Export-Import Bank, to be made trade representative, or for Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Devine to become the first transgender Surgeon General. Both were passed over.

There are still others who might break that glass ceiling, though, including former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. Still, the irony that we have at least four gay Christmas films but not a single gay nominee for a cabinet secretary in 2020 is not lost on me. On representation, at least, gay people are winning in a conservative culture but losing in an allegedly progressive administration.

There is still time for Biden to make history by nominating an openly gay cabinet secretary. I hope he takes the opportunity.